[aur-dev] [PATCH] Add newly submitted packages functionality with json interface

[elij]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Loui Chang <louipc.ist at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu 08 Oct 2009 18:03 -0500, Aaron Griffin wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 6:02 PM, elij <elij.mx at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 3:36 PM, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Flickr actually has two APIs - a feed based one and a REST based
>> >> "ajax" API. Both accept a format=foo parameter and json is allowed for
>> >> both sets.
>> >>
>> >> * Is the AUR's rss feed generated per request? Or is it a static output file?
>> >> * If it's generated, why not simply use the same "format=" thing here.
>> >>
>> >> Note that Flickr finds it totally acceptable and ideal to use feeds in
>> >> addition to their API
>> >
>> > As I recall, the feed is generated, then saved to a static file. This
>> > static file is then served up php script reads it to stdout if not
>> > expired, until such time as it expires. Then it is generated again.
>> >
>> > It appears to work that way as an artifact of the php class/import
>> > that is being used. There appears to be no option (without adding it
>> > yourself) to either use an alternate cache mechanism (memcached) or to
>> > return the feed in alternate formats (other than rss2.0).
>> >
>> > This is _mostly_ painting the shed though (or format war, tabs vs
>> > spaces, etc). Yet, for some reason this just doesn't 'smell' right to
>> > me though. I can be a bit conservative at times though.
>> >
>> > It just seems to me that, getting a list of the latest updates is ..
>> > wait for ... what feeds are for.
>>
>> Yes, exactly... but a "feed" doesn't always have to be RSS :)
>
> We could change the API to XML and then use RSS.
> But I'm not sure that we could represent all the data we'd like to when
> it comes to the RSS. Maybe we could add a custom XML namespace into the
> RSS feed. We'd need to declare one anyways for the API and to validate
> everything. I don't know. I'm a big noob when it comes to these things.
> ...

Change the api to xml?
Namespaces?
wtf are you talking about?

We have RSS in xml format. And we are talking about adding a json
output format representing the same data.
rss.php?fmt=json (json format)
rss.php?fmt=rss2 (rss2.0 format)
rss.php (default would be rss2.0)

This is because Laszlo thinks (and quite possibly so), that some tool
writers might want the 'latest data' that the feeds puke out,
available in the same json format as the api utils. I personally don't
think that belongs in the aurrpc interface. I think feeds should be in
their own 'feed interface'.

Am I confused? Did I miss something?